Newly acquired Portfolio author, Clifford Nass, earned a mention in the current issue of New York magazine.
Nass, a professor of communications and technology at Stanford, specializes in studying how humans interact with technology. He’s been tapped by several leading car manufacturers, including BMW, to help them design more user-friendly features, such as GPS and auto-correction systems, that won’t “offend” drivers.
One of his studies showed that German men won’t take direction from a GPS system with a female voice, even when reminded that the voice belongs to a computer, not a woman. Ah, machismo. Getting men lost since time immemorial.
Nass is currently working on a book for Portfolio that examines how the way we interact with technology can teach us a great deal about how we interact with each other.
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